The national touring production of Walking With Dinosaurs is currently playing at the RBC Center (thru Sunday), and doesn’t disappoint. The $20M spectacle, based on the BBC TV series, is an educational and entertaining walk through the three major periods when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Running at 1:38 (with a 20-minute intermission), the show dazzles children and adults alike.

My chief concern entering the event was how my 6-year-old daughter would handle it. Only this past May she had a miserable experience in Epcot’s Universe of Energy with its frightening robotic dinosaurs. Not so with the Walking…, however. The distance between the crowd and the animatronic dinosaurs is ample to  separate any feelings of danger. Perhaps her association with previous good experiences in that building helped, too. While the sound of roaring dinosaurs and crashing comets is startling at time, I saw no children around me aborting the night’s mission.

The show consists of three acts, each featuring a presentation of some of the dinosaurs that thrived in  major periods; Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic. Narrated by a strolling actor who is probably the next big thing in commercial voice-overs, the story gives a heaping load of facts while immersing the audience in a thrilling visual experience

More impressive than the content is the production itself. Just under one-half of the RBC Center is curtained off to create a theater setting. Above the floor surface is an enormous flying rig that is full of a few hundred concert lighting units and a booming sound system that carries impressive low end sound without and shrill tones whatsoever. The floor is lined with theatrical rocks that play a big part in set design during a few periods presented.

The real stars, though, are the dinosaurs. These mostly animatronic beasts are impressive. Standing as tall as 60 feet or so, the movements of these creatures such as the Ankylosaurus, the Torosaurus, and of course, the T-Rex, are so realistic, it is easy to forget the incredible wizardry that must be behind the dozens of mechanical articulations. Details down to running noses and blinking eyes weren’t overlooked. The skins, too, are extremely impressive. About the only thing omitted, thankfully, was the smells these beasts probably produced.

Today marks the 26th birthday of Disney’s EPCOT Center. While the star of its opening was Spaceship Earth, the buzz for years after concerned the impressive dinosaurs in the Universe of Energy. Hovering over the mobile theater cars, guests were amazed at the lifelike movements of these robots. Today we have the Walking With Dinosaurs tour, and it proves that evolution doesn’t just exist with progressive life forms, it also exists in the theater.